


even doves have pride

by missparker



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: 1980s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Pre-Series, Strippers & Strip Clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:25:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23240149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missparker/pseuds/missparker
Summary: She’s coming off a night at the French Palace when she hears about the new guy the Sheriff had brought in from Minneapolis. Some sort of insect expert, some sort of prodigious wunderkind that had to be wooed to Vegas with all kinds of perks apparently. His own office, starting at a CSI-2 but at the top of the salary steps. A stone’s throw from CSI-3.
Relationships: Gil Grissom/Catherine Willows
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	1. don't make me chase you

_dream, if you can, a courtyard_  
_an ocean of violets in bloom_  
_animals strike curious poses_  
_they feel the heat_  
_the heat between me and you_

**when doves cry - prince**

*

She’s been at the lab six weeks when they bring in a new hire. She still feels new, of course, but they’d hired her with one other tech and an assistant in the morgue and coming in with several people isn’t the same as being the only new person. The three of them had gone through training together. Lab procedures, chain of evidence, where to park, that sort of thing. She’d gotten her picture taken and laminated onto a badge. Catherine Flynn, Laboratory Technician.

“Cool,” she’d said when they’d handed it to her. Then she’d called Jimmy. 

“Congratulations, kid,” Jimmy Tadero had said when she’d told him she’d been hired by the crime lab. “One ticket off the pole.”

Except, it’s not. One paycheck in and she’d only had to spend ten minutes crunching numbers to realize that she can’t afford to live off the salary of a low level lab rat. She has rent to pay, she’s gotten used to eating. She’d have to give up her apartment completely and rent a room somewhere to get by on the pittance the LVPD pay her to crack their cases. She can dance less, but if she wants to keep her one bedroom apartment and gas in her car, she needs to work at least three nights a week at the French Palace. 

She’s coming off a night at the Palace when she hears about the new guy the Sheriff had brought in from Minneapolis. Some sort of insect expert, some sort of prodigious wunderkind that had to be wooed to Vegas with all kinds of perks apparently. His own office, starting at a CSI-2 but at the top of the salary steps. A stone’s throw from CSI-3.

All Catherine knows is that she’s tired and her feet hurt and she’s got another eight hours ahead of her before she can go to sleep. The new guy could be Tom Selleck and she wouldn’t give two shits about it. She drops her timecard into the clock, hits the button, and hears the machine stamp her card. Clocked in now, no going back no matter how tired she is. She can’t drink when she dances anymore, because she can’t drink before she works at the lab, so her shifts at the Palace are long and not quite as fun as they used to be. One of the other girls had offered her a bump but she doesn’t do that anymore, either. Not since Stephanie died. 

She stashes her stuff in the locker room, puts on her lab coat and hits the restroom.

The lighting in here is unflattering to say the least. She looks herself over, sighs. Gets a paper towel wet and dabs under her eyes, where the foundation has caked up. All that does is lift it, letting the dark circles show underneath. There’s eyeliner and mascara smeared along her lower lids, but she leaves it. That can wait. Most of the glitter is on her body and is hidden by her clothes. Glitter doesn’t violate the dress code, she’d checked, which is great because the stuff she uses isn’t made to come off easily.

Honestly, the best thing about this lab job, other than how it’s actually interesting and challenging, is that it’s her ugly job. Looking pretty isn’t a requirement and it’s a real relief. 

At her lab station, there’s already a backlog of tests. She’ll get some things going and then down some coffee while she waits for results. 

By the time her lunch break rolls around, she still hasn’t seen this new guy that has everyone in such a state. She doesn’t have any friends here yet, partly because she’s so new and partly because she hasn’t put any effort into it. She needs a steady job, not friends. She needs a job that leads to a better job and she’s going to get that by working hard, not by gossiping across lab benches. 

Plus the last friend she had ended up stabbed to death in an alley, so she’s a little burned out. 

She’s eating alone, today, like all days. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich and her third mug of black coffee. There’s a magazine at the table she’d thought about flipping through, but she’s too tired to process right now and is using her lunch break to stare at the poster about washing hands over the sink and let her brain turn off for a while.

That’s why she doesn’t notice someone pulling out a seat at her table until they’ve already sat down. It’s one of the round tables, a four top so he’s kind of across from her. There’s a chair between them on either side. By the time she snaps out of it and looks up at him, he’s got his lunch spread out already. 

“Hi,” he says, when they make eye contact.

She looks around the room. There’s two other round tables that are empty and there’s one of the CSI guys - Jason, she thinks - passed out on the couch. She can’t see his face, just the back of his head.

“Hi,” she says though it comes out a tiny bit hostile. She doesn’t mean it, she’s tired and just wary of men. He’s nearly handsome. He is handsome, actually, but not in a fashionable way. His polo shirt is too big, his glasses are out of style. But he’s got a great chin, tan skin. Curly hair that makes him look boyish. 

“What’s your name?” he asks, prying off the lid to a plastic container. She can smell it right away, some sort of curry seeped down into a bed of rice. 

“What’s yours?” she snaps back. He looks her over, gives her an easy smile that is both shrewd and disarming at once, somehow, and makes her feel guilty for being a snot. “Catherine.”

“Gilbert,” he says. “But my friends call me Gil. You can too, if you want.” 

“You’re the new guy,” she says. “From the midwest.”

“Hennepin County,” he says. “But I’m not from there. I’m from California.” 

“Oh,” she says. 

“Where are you from, Catherine?” he asks.

“Vegas,” she says. 

“Ahh,” he says. “A local. I know very little about this city. I’m a bit at a loss. Any advice?” 

“Uh,” she says, thinking it over. “Remember to hydrate?”

He chuckles. Sticks his fork in his container of curry and gives it a good stir. “Always sound advice. Anything else?”

“Pace yourself,” she says. There’s a clock wall behind him, over the door and it reads 1:27 pm. “I gotta get back to work.”

“It was nice to meet you, Catherine,” he says. “See you around?”

“Five days a week,” she says.

oooo

People don’t like the new guy. She hears the balding CSI, Conrad Ecklie, who is the big wig on night shift complaining about him when she comes into work a few days later. She’d gotten sleep so she feels better, but she’s got a shift at the Palace later, so she knows it can’t last. It’s Friday and weekends are always big money. It’d be stupid not to work. Last Saturday night she’d made six hundred and eighty seven dollars in four hours. She needs to save money, anyway, squirrel it away so she can do her last semester at Western Las Vegas University. She has one more semester until she can graduate. Having most of the degree behind her is why the lab hired her in the first place. She is taking this one semester off, had used a couple months of her break to get sober from cocaine and now there’s only a few months before the spring semester starts and she needs to be able to pay for it. 

She hears another lab tech complain about the new guy over her shoulder, about how he’s always trying to file everything priority.

“Maybe to him, everything is a priority,” Catherine offers. The tech, Peter, stares at her crossly. 

“That’s not really how that works, Flynn,” he says.

“Then maybe you should explain that to him instead of bitching about it,” she offers, giving him a sweet smile before spinning around in her chair. 

She’s one of like five women who work in the building including the receptionist. She knows she ought to just keep her mouth shut, her head down but it’s hard. It’s not in her nature. 

She has to pass Gibert Grissom’s office several times every day and she sees it start to fill with things. Insects, equipment, books. She sees him a few times carrying in full boxes, carrying out empty ones, like he’s moving in. Everyone is going to have to get used to him, she figures. He seems like he’s not going anywhere. 

Three weeks after he’s hired, they cross paths in the break room again.

“Catherine Flynn,” he says.

“Gilbert Grissom,” she greets. “We meet again.” 

“Do you know anywhere around here that’s good for lunch?” he asks. “You’re a local right? I think I need to leave the building today.”

“There’s a deli not that far,” she says. “Five blocks. Greenberg’s.”

He glances at his wrist watch, tilts his head. “Wanna come?”

“Oh,” she says, feeling her heart drop into her stomach. “Uh, hey. Listen, I’m not really interested in-”

“I’m not hitting on you,” he interrupts. 

“What?”

“I just thought maybe you wanted to go outside.” He shrugs. “It’s fine if you don’t.”

He turns to walk away. She can’t decide if she is embarrassed or offended. “Okay, fine, I’ll come.” 

She’s on like day seventeen of peanut butter and jelly. One sandwich isn’t going to break the bank.

He looks over his shoulder with a smirk. “Good. You can drive.” 

Her car is… not ready for guests. She keeps a lot of her gear for her other job in her car, though most of it is in a duffel bag in the trunk. She has a boxy little Honda Accord, dark gray, that she’d bought second hand. She looks through the windows, the only thing that’s really bad is a pair of clear acrylic heels on the floor of the backseat. Maybe he won’t notice them.

“It’s kind of a mess,” she says. 

“I love to see people’s cars,” he muses. “You can learn a lot about people by their cars.”

“Great,” she mutters, unlocking her door and pushing the button to unlock his. They climb in. She clears her throat, adjusts her mirror even though she’s the only one who ever drives this car anymore. She’s just nervous. He smells a little bit familiar, nothing so heavy as cologne but something she’s smelled before. Aftershave maybe. She likes it. She starts the car, puts on her seatbelt and waits until his belt is snapped in. 

“Since you’re flying, I’m buying,” he says as she starts to pull out of her parking spot. 

“That’s not necessary,” she says.

“I know, but I think it’s fair,” he says. 

It’s really not a long drive and he seems content to be quiet, to look around as they head down the street. It’s just one turn and then one more into the small parking lot behind the deli. It’s after the lunch rush so they get a spot.

“Hey,” she says when she kills the engine. “I’m sorry I assumed you were hitting on me. I just get that a lot.”

“Yeah,” he says thoughtfully. “I assume you do. That’s why I tried to reassure you right away.” 

“You assume?” she asks with a smile. 

“You’re a very beautiful woman, Catherine,” he says. 

Men tell her that all the time, but it always comes with the expectation of something. A date, a lap dance, a night in bed. Grissom doesn’t seem like he wants anything. 

“Thanks,” she says. 

“Did you know that moths aren’t actually attracted to light? They navigate by light. If a moth keeps the moon always to one side it can fly in a straight line. That’s why things like porch lights confuse it. Make it fly in circles,” he says. “It’s confusion, not attraction at all.” 

“Okay…?” she asks. 

“You’re a porch light, I think,” he says. 

“And that makes you what, a moth?” she asks.

“Oh no,” he says. “I’m an entomologist.” He flashes a grin and gets out, heads for the door to the deli. 

It’s strange, she can see why maybe people don’t like him. They don’t get him. And he is weird, but she kind of likes him, actually. There’s something refreshing about him, about the quiet energy he projects, about his indifference to everything except what interests him.

She orders what she wants, an egg salad sandwich with a pickle on the side and he pays for it, getting roast beef for himself. They sit at a little table, unwrap their sandwiches. 

“Why are you so nice to me?” she asks after a few bites. “I’m a lab rat. CSIs don’t usually pay us any attention unless we’re holding their lab results.” 

“Well,” he says thoughtfully. “I’m not the best at being social. When I go somewhere new, I like to find either the smartest or loneliest person and befriend them. That’s what I am, usually. It helps to stick together.” 

“Which one am I?” she asks. Then holds up her hand. “Kidding. I’m not fishing. I don’t have any friends in the lab because I’m new and I’m a woman and I’m just not… warm. It’s fine.” 

“Actually, I’ve been watching you work,” he says. “And I gotta say, I think you’re actually both.” 

She takes another bite of her sandwich, doesn’t know what to say to that. People tell her she’s pretty, not smart. Or if they do notice she’s smart, they observe it with such a tone of surprise that it’s worse than people just thinking she’s dumb.

“I just try to keep my head down, that’s all,” she settles on finally.

He nods. “Me too,” he agrees.

oooo

Maybe it’s career suicide to be his friend, but one morning he comes into the full lab and says, “Good morning, Catherine.” 

And she says, “Good morning, Gil,” and then that’s it. They’re friends, at least in the eyes of her coworkers. She’d pulled a double, all the rats had, trying to get through a big shoot out at the Tangiers, and so it happens in front of enough people that a bunch of them stop and look up curiously.

“You process my vic’s clothes?” he asks, coming around to her side of the bench.

“I did,” she says, reaching for a folder to hand him. He takes it, opens it, reads it with pursed lips. “Gunshot residue, blood, and… what’s this?” he asks. 

She glances at what he’s showing her, though she knows. “Gin and tonic,” she says.

“That’s right,” he says. “Good work.” 

And then he’s gone. 

“Gil?” asks Gary, with a slight mocking lilt in his voice. He’s been here the longest, is lab supervisor but she’s already gleaned that he probably shouldn’t be supervising anyone because he’s an asshole. That longevity does not leadership make.

“It’s what he asked me to call him,” she says. 

“Didn’t ask me to call him, Gil,” Peter mutters from the next bench. 

She just smirks. 

oooo

It’s foolish to think she can keep her day life and night life separate, but she tries and for about four months she’s successful. Tired, but successful. The only person who knows her from both places is Jimmy and now that Stephanie’s gone, he doesn’t hang around the Palace much anymore. They get coffee sometimes, but it’s not really the same. 

Cops are regulars at strip clubs everywhere, both on the clock and off, but since she’s in the lab, she figures they’ll hardly even notice her in a lab coat and if they’re watching her dance, they aren’t going to be looking at her face. 

She doesn’t consider the CSIs as potential customers. It’s just that they’re big nerds, even the ones at the top of the pecking order. Furthermore, they’re science nerds, they know how disgusting some place like a strip club is. How much DNA is scattered across every single surface. In fact, since working in the lab, she’s taking to disinfecting her locker and all her gear way more often than she used to. 

It’s Saturday night, she’d slept most of the day and then had gone grocery shopping. Had talked to her mom for awhile on the phone but that never ends well and it hadn’t this time, either. She’d hung up angry, had gone for a run, taken a shower, blow dried her hair. 

Now she’s at work, sitting in front of a mirror, doing her makeup in a metallic bikini with a transparent negligee on top. 

“Catherine,” the house mother, Alice says. “Five minutes.”

“Shit,” she says. She’s been dawdling and now she has to do a slapdash job of gluing on her fake eyelashes. 

“Full house,” Alice says. 

“Yeah?” she asks, waving the lash in the air so the glue will get sticky. 

“Eat ‘em up, take their cash, darlin’,” Alice says.

Catherine grins. “Thanks.” 

Lashes on, she hurries out to the curtain. Hears her music come on, thumping hard and loud. 

It’s not a great job, but there is some validation in it. She likes the whistles and hollers when she comes stomping out in her heels, face painted up to God. Most of the newer girls are half plastic these days. Fake boobs, fake butts. She’s one of the few all natural girls left, but she’ll make twice what most girls will make tonight. Teddy calls it the _It Factor_. 

One of the new girls with a fake rack had complained to him that Catherine got favored. Better music, better time slots, better shifts.

“You want to be treated like Catherine?” Teddy had said. “You want to make what Catherine makes? Be that pretty, be that smart. Work that hard. You can’t buy the tits and expect them to do all the hard work for you. If it were as easy as Catherine makes it look, more girls would be strippers, Kimberly!” 

She still smiles, thinking about it. 

Their main stage has three poles and she works them all, remembers to do what most girls forget to do when they’re busy trying to look sexy - she smiles. She’s down to just the bottom half of the bikini by the time she makes it to the third pole. The stage is already covered in cash. She does a few pole tricks, then crawls to the edge of the stage.

Comes face to face with Conrad Ecklie. The night shift CSI. 

There’s nothing to be done about it now. It’s clear, even in the low light, that he knows exactly who she is. All she can do is skip past him, flirt with his friend, get back to center stage by the time the song ends. She works hard not to let her face show how she’s feeling which is up real close to the edge of panic. Roberto comes out, helps her get all her cash into her bag. She waves, bows, exits. 

Slaps her hand into her closed locker and says, “Goddamn it!” 

It makes the room go quiet and then Stacy says, “You looked hot, don’t worry about it.” 

She doesn’t like to talk about her life here, so all she can do is pull it together. She forces herself to nod at Stacy and the other girls, gives a meager smile.

“Thanks,” she says. Opens her locker so she can slip on her robe. 

Alice doesn’t let her hide in the back. “Go work the floor, Cat,” she says, though she is kind about it. She can see Catherine’s not having the best night. “It’s too full out there for you to be in here.”

By the time she gets back out into the dark, smokey club, Ecklie is gone. 

oooo

Gil is always at work already when she arrives, even today when she comes in early. She’s glad, she’s here specifically to talk to him, doesn’t even stop at the locker room first. She still has on her denim jacket, is holding her purse.

“Can I talk to you?” she asks.

He’s deep in his own thoughts, it takes him a moment to come up out of the fog and register that she’s there. He blinks owlishly from behind his glasses and then seems to realize that he’s being addressed.

“Come in,” he says. 

She makes sure that his office door is closed and then drops all her stuff into one of the two chairs that face him, sits in the other. 

“Hi,” he says.

“Can I ask your advice on something? Like, hypothetically?” she asks. 

“Okay,” he agrees. He’s holding a magnifying glass and he sets it down to give her his full attention, closes the folder he’d been looking at, covering the photograph. 

“I’ve got this friend,” she says. “She’s got a government job, sort of like me.”

“Uh huh,” he says. She can already tell he’s not buying her sham tale, but she has to save just a little face. 

“She also works this other job. It’s not illegal but some people find it to be…”

“Amoral,” he offers when she trails off. 

“Yes,” she says. “I was going to say unsavory.” 

“Is it?” he asks. “Unsavory?”

She shrugs. “It’s a job. She makes great money.”

“Got it,” he says.

“Say that someone from her government job saw her at her, uh, after hours job,” Catherine says. “What should she do about that?”

“Why should she do anything at all?” he asks, weaving his fingers together in front of him. 

“Well,” Catherine says. “Because this guy could really hurt my… my friend's reputation at her day job!” 

“Was the man at your friend’s other job in his official capacity as a county employee or as a patron of the establishment?” Gil asks. 

“Patron,” Catherine says. 

“So, seems like his reputation could be on the line, too, then,” Gil offers. “That he and your friend will both be better off by simply saying nothing.” 

“I guess,” she says. She glances at her wrist watch. She has five minutes before she has to clock in or be late. “So it’s a wait and see then.”

“Catherine,” Gil says. “The legal activities you engage in during your off time are not the county’s business. If someone tries to make them the county’s business, please let me know.”

She nods.

“Sorry,” he says. “Your friend, I mean.”

“Yeah,” she says. She smiles at him. “Thanks.” She gathers her things. 

“Hey,” he says. “I was going to go to the movies after work. You want to come?”

“The movies?” she asks. It’s Monday, she doesn’t work at the Palace, classes don’t start for another three weeks. She could sit in the dark for a couple hours. That doesn’t sound half bad. “Okay.”

“Meet you in the parking lot at 6:30. We can caravan,” he says. 

Maybe she should have asked what he was planning on seeing. She doesn’t know what’s out, really, right now. It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t care what it is.

He’s by her car at 6:30 on the nose. There’s another car parked next to hers that turns out to be his, a Jeep.

“Follow me,” he says.

He leads her not to one of the big multi-screen theaters, but to the little art house that shows foreign films, independent films, or things that have filtered out of the bigger movie houses. He buys them two tickets to see _Dead Poets Society_. She remembers, distantly, it coming out at the beginning of the summer.

“You haven’t already seen it, right?” he asks, handing her the little paper ticket. 

“Uh, no,” she says. 

“Good,” he says. “Popcorn?”

“I’ll get it,” she offers. “You got the tickets.”

“Okay,” he agrees. She gets them two small bags instead of one big one. It’s not a date, after all. If there’s one thing she knows for sure, with Gil, he’s not trying to trick her into something romantic. 

Sitting in the dark theater is lovely. It’s air conditioned, her popcorn is buttery and salty. The theater is mostly empty and the movie, something she would have never seen on her own, is pretty good. 

They part in the parking lot. “See you tomorrow, Catherine,” he says. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Bye.”

He pulls out, drives away. 

Strange, strange man. Finding a man with no interest in her is like finding a unicorn.

oooo

She registers for the last three college classes she’s ever going to have to take and then carries the print out of her schedule to the on campus bookstore to buy her books. Except for registration day is chaos and the line is out the door. She goes inside, just to scope out what she’ll need. Five textbooks for three classes and she does the mental math in her head. It’s going to cost her over four hundred dollars. Two hundred for one book alone. 

“Fucking highway robbery,” she mutters. She doesn’t buy anything. She’ll come back later.

At work on Tuesday, Gil stops by her lab bench and says, “How did registration go?” She’d mentioned that she was going back to finish her last semester; she’s surprised he’d both remembered and has bothered to ask.

“Good,” she says. “Fine. Books are… so expensive.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “What did you buy?”

“Nothing yet!” she says. “I have a list. I was going to see if the library here had them before I spent actual money on them.” She reaches into her lab coat to pull out her schedule, where she’d scrawled the titles hastily in the bookstore. He takes it, looks it over. 

“I have… all of these. Maybe the fourth edition on the Raynard one,” he says. “You can borrow them.” 

“Oh,” she says. “Really?”

“May I?” Gil reaches out, carefully and slowly extracts a pen from the breast pocket of her lab coat. He writes something down next to her list of titles and then slides the schedule and pen back to her. She can see he’s written down an address. “Any evening is fine.”

“Okay,” she says. “Um, thanks.” 

“You’re welcome,” he says. “Now, blood spatter.”

“Blood spatter!” she says. “Yes!” She pulls a photograph out of a folder and shows it to him. “I took another look and while I agree overall, it’s consistent with a gunshot wound, I circled some anomalous areas. Here and here, specifically.”

She points.

“What do you think it is?” he asks.

“These drops are way more consistent with blunt force,” she says. “I think maybe before anyone was shot, they were hit in the head with something blunt and heavy.” 

“I think that, too,” he says. “Thank you for confirming.” 

“Yeah, no problem,” she says. 

When he’s gone, Peter says, “You and bug boy have a hot date later, Flynn?”

“No,” she says. 

“Seems like you do,” he presses.

“Sorry to disappoint you, then,” she says. 

“You know what I think?” he asks.

“I really would rather keep it professional than hear about your incorrect assumptions,” she says. “Can we do that?”

He snorts, rolls his eyes, says, “Whatever you want, Flynn.” 

She truly likes Gil, likes being his only friend, doesn’t even mind him being her only friend. It’s a shame that their totally above board friendship is causing gossip. They aren’t doing anything wrong. 

There’s another female lab tech, Carol, who works nights and they often see each other in passing in the locker room. Carol’s probably in her 40s, has a family because Catherine has seen their picture in Carol’s locker. It must be hard to work nights. Catherine gets why she does it, it’s more money on the night shift but she must either never see her kids or is just tired all the time. 

Catherine is used to working nights, actually. Maybe the night shift would be better for her. When she graduates, anyway. But then she’d never see Gil, she’d have to talk to Ecklie who stares past her now, like she doesn’t exist, like she’s gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe.

“Hey Cath,” Carol says tiredly, tying up her hair. 

“Have a good night,” Catherine says and means it. 

Her class schedule is in her bag, she sees it when she gets back to her apartment, sets her bag on the counter where it falls open. She does her usual coming home routine. Checks her answering machine, drinks a glass of water, takes her shoes off. The schedule is getting crumpled, so she smooths it out against the counter and flips it to look at what he’d written.

She squints at the address. He’s only two blocks away, he’s at one of the neighboring apartment complexes. What are the odds? It makes sense, actually, there’s a lot of apartment complexes in this neighborhood, they’re decently far off strip so prices aren’t sky high but close enough that the commute isn’t tragically bad. Catherine had signed a year lease, but she knows a bunch of places that will do month to month. Maybe that’s what he’d wanted, moving to a new place. A lease that didn’t lock him in. 

He’d said any evening is fine. Would it be too weird to go over there tonight? Would it seem desperate?

She could get a jump on the reading, pre-read as much as possible before the semester starts. If she gets the bulk of the reading out of the way, she doesn’t have to budget as much time for homework, can maybe work a few more Palace shifts and then not live paycheck to paycheck. She has two decently paying, steady jobs, but school really stretches her thin and Vegas isn’t the cheapest place to live. 

She decides not to overthink it. Tosses her keys and wallet into her backpack, puts a bottle of wine in so she doesn’t show up empty handed. Walks the two blocks with her schedule in her hand, gets a little turned around in the complex, looking for his unit. She thinks she’s completely lost when she passes the swimming pool for a second time before she realizes it’s a second swimming pool, and then finally, she spots his building, tucked into the back corner of the complex. He’s upstairs. 

Maybe he won’t be home. 

She knocks, fights the urge to spin on her heel and sprint down the stairs before she’s spotted. 

When he opens the door, she sees surprise on his face but it melts into a smile.

“You said anytime,” she says. 

“Yeah, I did,” he says. 

“Did you know we’re neighbors?” she asks. 

“Are we?” he asks. “Come on in.”

He steps aside. His apartment is bigger than hers, though it feels small because there’s still unpacked boxes stacked up against one of the walls of the living room. There’s a nice kitchen, a hall with a bathroom. It seems like a two bedroom. 

“Yeah, I live just a couple blocks away. I walked, it was so close,” she says. 

She smiles at him nervously. “I should have called first maybe.”

“No,” he says. “Also I didn’t give you my number.”

“True,” she says. 

“I’m glad you're here, actually, I was just about to have some dinner. Will you have some with me?”

“Uh,” she says. “Okay.” 

“Great,” he says. She slides her backpack off one shoulder and reaches around to unzip it.

“I didn’t want to show up with nothing,” she says, pulling out the wine bottle and offering it to him.

“Look at that,” he says. “Meant to be.”

There’s something very soothing about all of this. When she’s with him, alone like this especially, she doesn’t feel anxious or exhausted or on edge. He projects a calmness that seems to settle over her. She pokes around his living room, looking at his bookshelves, easily the most unpacked aspect of his life. There are a few things hung - frames with insects pinned and labeled. A few posters. No photographs. 

“Do you have a family?” she asks, when she realizes this.

He chuckles. “I wasn’t hatched from an egg, despite rumors to the contrary. I have a mother.” 

“Oh yeah? Are you close?” Catherine asks. 

“I write her a letter once a week,” Gil says from the kitchen. “What about you?”

“I have a mother,” Catherine says. “I do not write her letters.”

“What about your father?” he asks. 

She shrugs, looking at a signed baseball in a clear plastic box. “Never met him. What about yours?”

“Passed away,” Gil says.

“No brothers or sisters?” she asks.

“No,” he says.

“Yeah, me either,” she says. “That I know about, anyway.” 

“I thought we might eat out on the balcony,” he says, gesturing across the living room to the sliding glass doors. He hands her a bowl full of salad. “Can you take that out for me?”

“Sure,” she says. He has her make several trips - dishes, silverware, glasses of ice water. Then he carries out a casserole. Whatever it is smells good. Vegetables and meat all mixed together in a creamy sauce. Her stomach rumbles. 

There’s a small table out on the balcony, white plastic with matching white chairs. It’s cooled down enough that it’s pleasant outside but not hot or cold and they can watch the sun setting while they eat. He opens her bottle of wine and produces two wine glasses, pours them half a glass each.

“Cheers,” he says and she taps her glass gently to him.

“Who taught you to cook?” she asks after the first bite. “This is great!”

“My mother taught me the basics, but mostly I am self taught,” he says. “Out of necessity.”

“Is there anything you’re bad at?” she asks.

“Oh yes,” he says. “I’ll let you figure it out on your own, though.”

The glass of wine makes her feel happily relaxed, so she’s not expecting his next question.

“You have a faint indentation and discoloration on your ring finger. Can I ask what happened?” 

She looks at her own hand and can barely see it. He probably noticed it the first time he met her and has been waiting for an opportunity to ask. Still, it’s the most personal thing he’s asked her so far. But she feels like maybe she’s okay to talk about it.

“I got… unengaged,” she says. 

“Better than divorce, I hear,” he says.

“He wasn’t… so supportive of my decision to change careers. To go to school,” she says. “I made the most money and when he realized that I was going to spend it on school and make less, he spent more time trying to convince me to drop out than he ever spent supporting me.”

“So you left him,” Gil says.

She sighs. “No, I just put up with him. But I think he knew I was thinking about calling off the engagement because he sabotaged our birth control.”

Gil sits up, a stormy look of anger darkening his features. She’s never seen him this way, like sudden ripples in an otherwise calm pool. 

“I got pregnant,” Catherine says. “But had a miscarriage. _Then_ I left him.” She drags her fork across her empty plate. “With some distance I can see how Eddie was kind of a loser but also, being totally on my own is hard and I do kind of miss having, you know, someone around. Sometimes.” 

When he looks up at him, he’s looking at her so intently that the hair on her arm rises a little. The back of her neck gets prickly. He reaches for the bottle of wine, adds more to both of their glasses. 

“You’re all right though? Health wise?” 

“Yeah,” she nods. “Perfectly healthy.” 

“Good,” he says.

“You ever been married?” she asks. “Engaged?”

“No,” he says. 

“Some beautiful lady out there somewhere must be really into bugs,” she says. 

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe she’s really into blood spatter.”

She laughs, surprised. “Now she’d be a catch,” Catherine guffaws. He just looks at her warmly.

When it’s time to go, he offers to drive her home because her bag is full of heavy textbooks. 

“No, it will be good for me. Walk off your good cooking,” she says. “Thanks again.”

“My pleasure,” he says. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Night.”

He watches her from the window, she knows because when she looks back, he waves. 

oooo

Someone keels the fuck over and straight up dies in the French Palace on a Friday night and the whole place goes on lockdown until the cops show up. There’s nothing she can do, there’s nowhere she can go. She’s been working at the crime lab for several months now and she knows more cops than she used to. Jim Brass from Vice shows up because they think it’s an overdose but then they aren’t sure so they call in reinforcements. 

She’s going to have to face Conrad Ecklie again, goddamn it. She'd been working the floor, at least, not the pole, had just come out of a private party and that’s a good thing because it’s an alibi for when the guy died. But she’s in a dress made of fishnet and a g-string and nothing else. Black star pasties over her nipples. Hardly clothes at all. 

They won’t let them into the locker room so she can’t even put on a robe. The house lights come on and lights in a strip club are never a good thing. What looks dark and sexy now looks grimy, worn down, exposed. She thinks she probably looks better in less light, too. She stands with her arms crossed over her breasts with the six other girls. 

All the customers are on the other side. The dead guy is in the middle. 

She’s prepared for Ecklie, for a few hours of staring through him, refusing eye contact, continuing their masquerade of non-recognition.

She’s not prepared for Gil. 

He walks in holding his black kit, stops to talk to some of the officers. 

She feels her whole body flush with shame. She knows he knows that she must do some kind of work like this, he’s not a moron and no one bought that ‘my friend is in trouble’ story she’d tried to peddle. But he never had details. He didn’t _know_. 

“You okay?” asks Janice, cracking gum. “You’re all red.” 

“Just hoping the floor opens up and swallows me,” she whispers. “Just waiting for death.”

“I don’t think we’re that lucky,” Janice says with a sigh. 

It was supposed to be a good night. It’s a fight night. The fight is in Vegas, which fills the city up. And then, when the fight is over, all those men spill out of bars and into strip clubs. It’s supposed to be a diamond night, every girl expected to make over a thousand dollars, easy. She can pay her rent in five hours on a fight night. Her money bag is already getting heavy, tied around her ankle securely. 

She watches Gil make a sweeping observation of the club, walk over to the body, and then look around more closely at the crowd. First the men, and then, the women. His gaze settles on her and she feels tears prick her eyes but she refuses to look away out of what? Pride? He weaves through the cops, heading over to her. She hugs herself harder, feels a tear fall through she’s really trying not to cry. She’s been a stripper for a lot of years now, she’s not embarrassed by her choices or her circumstances, but this isn’t how she wants Gil to see her. It’s just not. 

“Hi,” he says, like he’s standing at her lab bench. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks. All the girls are staring at him. “It’s night.”

“There was an explosion at the Caesars,” he says. “All of night is there, they asked me to come work this. I’m solo, I could use your eyes.” 

“They told me to wait here,” she says. 

“Eh, Brass said you were cleared. He said you were in another room. We can make sure you don’t handle anything,” he says.

“Gil, I can’t, not like this,” she says, wiping her eyes. Her fingers come back with murky tears - mascara and eyeshadow running already. 

“Oh,” he says. He unclips his badge from his coat and reattaches it to his polo shirt. Shrugs off the coat and hands it to her. She takes it and puts it on; it’s long enough that it covers her ass, at least. She zips it up. Gil has already headed back toward the body. She turns to Janice and holds out her hands.

“Help me roll up the sleeves,” she says. 

“Who the fuck was that?” Janice asks.

“That your boyfriend? What happened to Eddie?” demands Stacy.

“I left Eddie,” Catherine snaps. “That’s my boss. Sort of.”

“Must be gay,” says Diana, looking at her nails. “He looked right through you. And the rest of us.”

“Cath!” Gil calls. 

She walks carefully over. In her heels, she’s as tall as he is. She’d never considered that Gil could be gay. She just doesn’t get that vibe from him. Gay is a scary word right now, gay feels like a death sentence because of AIDS. If he were gay, he certainly wouldn’t broadcast it. 

“What do you know about him?” Gil asks. She feels a little better covered up and because his professionalism doesn’t seem to waver. His jacket smells like him, that familiar, comfortable smell.

“Nothing,” she says. “He’s not a regular.”

Gil glances up at her, interested in her insider’s perspective. 

“Did you see who he was with?” he asks. 

She has to think about it, to close her eyes and picture the whole floor when she came out from the private rooms area. It’d been so crowded, but he’d been here with a bigger group, she thinks. “Suits,” she says. “Like, salesmen. Stockbrokers or car salesmen or maybe, I don’t know. Real estate? That type. It was a group. Not a bachelor’s party, though.” 

Gil crouches down, looks at the vic. “Brass says overdose. Said he foamed up.”

“He did,” Catherine says. “I saw him when the lights came up. But it wasn’t just… I mean, I’ve seen some ODs before. His foam was pink.”

Gil takes something out of the kit and scratches at the dried residue of foam around the victim’s mouth. “What does pink mean?” he asks.

“Blood?” she responds. 

“What else do you notice?” he asks. She has to twist to crouch down, has to do so carefully. Both not to fall off her heels and not to let her whole ass be exposed. 

“His lips are blue and his fingertips,” she says. “There’s something on his nails.”

“They’re discolored,” Gil agrees. “It’s indicative of heavy metal poisoning.” 

“You think this is murder?” she asks. “Not an OD?”

“I think someone was trying to kill this man,” Gil says. “Any more than that, I’m not sure yet.”

He helps her back to her feet. “Thanks,” she says. He already has gloves on, but she can feel the warmth through the latex. 

“Metal poisoning is a long term thing,” Gil muses. “Not something that could happen in one night.”

“So… it’s not related?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says. “We’ll have to see what the medical examiner says.” He sighs, rubs his gloved hands together. “Can you go talk to the cops and see if they can’t start clearing people out of here?”

“No,” she says. He looks over at her in surprise. “Hey, I’m happy to help you think it all through, but I don’t have authority here. I’m one of them.” She jerks her head toward her co-workers. Stacy and Diana have sat down on one of the fake leather benches, slumped against one another. Janice refuses to sit where the men sit and Catherine thinks that’s smart. No one is going to catch Catherine bare assed on these filthy seats if she can help it.

“Okay,” he says. “Right. I’ll go.”

He starts to head away and then stops.

“You’re not just one of them to me,” he says, and then carries on. 

He thinks he’s saying something sweet, nice even, but his words make Catherine feel a wave of something. Shame or anger, maybe. He thinks she’s better than the women over there, that she’s above them but she isn’t. She comes to work just the same as them, puts on the same cheap polyester, dances to the same stupid songs, gets just as naked as they do. Takes men’s money. She’s no better, they’re certainly not worse. Stacey teaches at a preschool during the day, Janice has three kids to feed, Melissa is a college student, Diana worked at a law firm as a paralegal until her shitty lawyer ex-husband blacklisted her around town. 

She goes back to the group of women. “I think they’re going to start to try to clear the building. A cop will probably take a statement and then we can go home.” 

“So much for fight night,” Melissa says. “I thought I was going to make at least a few more hundred.”

“Yeah,” Catherine says. “Me too.”

The cops do take statements and are very clear that they might have follow up questions. Teddy wants them to stick around in case they can re-open for just a couple hours but Catherine tells him that’s a pipe dream.

“Cops don’t rush, neither do the criminalists. You’ll be lucky if you can go home tomorrow,” she says, and he groans. 

None of the girls leave until the customers have mostly cleared out, their cars out of the parking lot - men hanging around for the girls after shift is always a fear. They always leave in a group. Catherine peels of her pasties with a wince, covers her nipples with baby oil and then throws on a sweatshirt and some leggings. She puts up her hair, will scrape off the makeup at home. Sneakers feel like heaven. 

She has no plans to say goodbye to Gil, but he stops her on the way out and the girls don’t want to wait so she lets them go on ahead.

“I thought you were going to stay,” he says. “You could take my notes.”

“I’m not your assistant,” she says. 

“You’re smart enough to be,” he counters. “You could do what I do, no sweat.”

“It is sweat,” she says. “You don’t get it. You have no idea how hard I’ve worked to get where I am and how much work it takes just to stay here. Two jobs. Three classes. I’m tired. I’m leaving. Write your own notes.”

“Hey,” he says. “I think I know… this is about what you made tonight? What if I made up the difference.” And here, he reaches for his wallet, pulls out three twenty dollar bills. 

She didn’t want him to see her working here, but she’s not ashamed of the job. Now, shame washes over her like hot vomit. She’s not a girl for hire, she won't do anything a man wants if he has enough cash. She likes being Gil’s friend because he treats her with respect, but right now he’s made her feel like a whore.

“Fuck you,” she says and walks away. 

There’s a uniformed officer at the door to the club. “Can you walk me to my car?” she asks.

“Sure,” he says. 

He doesn’t say anything about her crying, which is nice of him.


	2. and when you're gone he might regret it

_Long stem roses are the way to your heart but_  
_He needs to start with your head_  
_Satin sheets are very romantic_  
_What happens when you're not in bed_

**Express Yourself - Madonna**

*

Gil doesn’t apologize. He does look at her with a confused, hangdog expression a few times, but she doesn’t care. Between classes and work, she’s tired and she’s just interested in keeping her head down. 

The second week in October, she’s coming home from class and she can see Eddie’s car parked outside of her building. It’s late now, nearly ten at night. She’d worked all day, done a three hour biology lab class which feels like a waste of time because it’s watered down versions of things she does for real at work all day, but she has to take it to graduate. 

She has a restraining order against Eddie that’s good for three years, because when she’d told him she lost the baby, he accused her of getting an abortion and punched her in the face twice. She’d had the locks changed, but hadn’t been able to move. Eddie shows up now and again, drunk and angry. He’s the most angry about the French Palace. It’s his favorite strip club and he can’t go when Catherine’s working. 

“Boo hoo,” she’d told him over the phone. 

She doesn’t see him anywhere but she’s not taking her chances. She could call the cops, but she’s so tired, she doesn’t want to deal with all of that. Eddie has probably just parked his car here to spook her. Had a friend pick him up. He’s such a petty dick.

She doesn’t park, instead drives two blocks away and swallows her pride. 

Gil looks sleepy when he answers the door in sweats and a t-shirt. 

“Catherine,” he says.

“Listen,” she says. “Look I know… we’re… having a weird thing right now but I can’t go home, my ex is there I think.” 

“Come in,” he says. 

“Thanks.”

He shuts the door behind them, locks it. She can see that the TV is on mute with closed captions and that there’s a pillow and blanket on the couch. There are dirty dishes on the coffee table, like he hadn’t bothered to clean up after dinner. She thinks of him as particular, fastidious. 

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Did you see him? Your ex?” Gil asks, ignoring the question.

“No,” she says. “I saw his car. I think he’s just trying to scare me.” 

“And you broke up when?” he asks, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. 

“Nine months ago,” she says. “We were together four years.”

“I thought… you had a TRO,” Gil says.

“I do,” she replies, dropping her backpack onto the ground. It’s heavy. Should she offer to give back his textbooks now that they’re not speaking? She’ll give them back after the semester, for sure. And anyway, they’re speaking now. 

“Did you call it in?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “They’ll come, shine a flashlight into his car, tell me to call them back if I actually see him.” 

“Yeah,” Gil says. 

“Maybe I’m overreacting,” she says. “I can go home, call the cops. It’s fine.”

“Absolutely not,” he says. “You did the right thing. Stay here for the night.”

“I don’t want to impose, I was just-”

“Catherine!” he says and he says it loud. He’s never raised his voice at her before and it makes her go still. “Stay here,” he says, more calmly. “I insist.” 

It’s a little awkward. He cleans up his dishes, makes her a turkey sandwich. She eats it while they watch the ten o’clock news. She keeps waiting for him to bring up that night at the Palace, but he doesn’t. She doesn’t want to have to explain to him why he hurt her feelings, so she doesn’t bring it up either. 

Finally, when she’s yawned twice, he says, “You can have the bed.”

She doesn’t feel like a fight so she just agrees. It seems like he’d been planning to sleep out here anyway before she ever showed up. 

The bedroom isn’t big but it’s big enough for a queen sized bed and a chest of drawers. She’s been in his bathroom before, there’s a door that leads from the hall and a door that leads in from the master. The master door is behind the dresser which she finds endearing. She also hates a bathroom with two entrances. 

“The sheets aren’t fresh but… they’re not dirty,” he says. “I don’t have another set.”

“It’s lovely, thank you,” she says.

“Can I give you something to sleep in?” he asks.

“Maybe just a t-shirt,” she says. 

He opens one of the drawers and pulls out a soft gray shirt that says _Crescat scientia; vita excolatur_ and has the University of Chicago crest on it. She takes it.

“Thank you.” 

“Wake me up if you need anything,” he says. “I’m right here.” 

“Gil,” she says. “Really. Thank you.”

She keeps a toothbrush in her bag, just a habit from working so many jobs, being so many places. She brushes her teeth, washes her face with the bar of white soap by his sink. Leaves her clothes on the floor and wears the shirt, long enough to hit mid-thigh. It’s so soft, countless wears and countless washings. It smells like him, clean and warm. 

She’s in the bed, lights off when he knocks on the door, opens it to reveal just the shadow of him backlit by the hall light. His curly hair, curved legs. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, I have to say this.”

She sits up, worried. “Say what?”

“I see so much potential in you, I think you’re so smart and when I came to work the crime scene at the French Palace, I think I made you feel cheap,” he says. “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” she says.

“That was not my intention but I know I was wrong, that I screwed it up. I’m sorry, Catherine. I’m really-” His voice cracks here. “I’m sorry.”

She gets out of the bed, hurries over and throws herself against him. Puts her arms around his neck. He’s startled because it takes him a few moments to react but then he hugs her back, his arms around her waist. She rests her face on his chest for just a moment and then pushes up on her toes so she can press her lips to his cheek.

Just a hint of stubble, like he’d shaved in the morning. 

“Thanks,” she says softly.

He steps back, disengages. Wanders away. 

Lying in his bed, she considers that she might be a little in love with Gil. He’s too good for her, she knows. A doctor, the most educated man she’s ever had a conversation with while she was wearing all of her clothes. He’s in his thirties, she still feels like just a kid. He doesn't want her anyway. He’d made that clear in the beginning, that he wasn’t hitting on her and didn’t plan to. 

It’s fun to let her brain fantasize though. To think about what their life could be like. A little house, working crime scenes together. Because maybe she’d apply to the criminalist program after all, once she got her bachelors. It’s another year of school, but with a partner, she could swing it. 

She pictures him kissing her and it makes her toes curl up a little. 

God she’s so stupid. She’s wearing his shirt, lying in his bed and he’s in the other room. She’d hugged him, kissed his cheek and he’d tucked tail and left. 

He’s not interested, she reminds herself. 

He’s never going to be.

oooo

The lab goes on lockdown, but at first she’s not sure why. It turns out some disgruntled husband of someone shows up with a gun and shoots out one of the glass walls. Catherine doesn’t see it first hand, she’s in the locker room when alarms start to wail. It’s been a long day and she’s more than ready to go home.

She thinks it’s a drill, opens the locker room door to stick her head out and sees a flurry of activity, officers booking it down the hallway. She’s stupid about it, she just stands there and stares until someone pushes her back. She knows him by smell before she sees his face.

“Shut the door, turn off the light,” Gil says. “He’s armed.”

“This is real?” she asks, following his order to hit the lights. 

“He shot out the wall in the trace lab,” Gil says. “Move all the way to the back, sit on the floor. We’re not going to make a sound until the all clear.”

He makes sure she’s tucked away in the darkest corner and then sits in front of her, his service weapon in hand. 

“How did you know I was in here?” she asks.

“Shhh,” he says. 

It’s hard to sit and be quiet. They can hear some commotion, some yelling. She’s so nervous she has to pee. She squirms a little, starts to lean forward but he puts his hand back and so she doesn’t. 

It feels like ages, but it’s maybe only ten minutes. She spends a lot of it studying the back of his head to distract herself. His curl pattern, how there’s some gray threading through the brown. How tan the back of his neck is. He spends a lot of time outdoors, head bent over crime scenes, the nape of his neck exposed to the sun. 

They hear shots fired. She covers her face, waits it out. Either someone they know is dead or they’ve taken out the gunman. A long, long stretch of quiet and then the crackly overhead speaker. “ _All clear_.” 

“How did you know I was here?” she blurts, desperate to get the question out.

“I wanted to make sure you were safe,” he says. “I looked for you.” 

He reaches his hand out, hauls her to her feet. She knew she was scared but hadn’t realized how scared. Her knees feel wobbly. She sways for a minute.

“Whoa, okay, sit down,” he says, letting her sink to the bench and then sitting next to her. “You’re okay.”

Against her better judgement, she twists her body to hug him. He doesn’t hesitate this time, just holds her. The back of his neck is as warm as she’d pictured and she catches herself running her fingers through his hair here. 

That’s how Ecklie finds them anyway, finally let in from the parking lot to start night shift.

“You lovebirds need a minute?” he asks. 

She pulls back, embarrassed but she can feel Gil go rigid, turn quickly and spit, “Go fuck yourself, Conrad,” he says.

“Whoa, man-” Ecklie says, raising his hands.

“While you were out twiddling your thumbs in the parking lot, everyone in this building was in serious danger!” 

“Grissom,” Catherine says. She doesn’t use his first name in front of Ecklie anymore and this is why.

“You think it’s fine to make jokes about the lives of your colleagues? I’m filing a complaint,” Grissom says. 

“Griss, Griss, hey,” Catherine says, grabbing his arm. She’d never seen him so angry. She doesn’t think he’d get physical but he’s shaking a little, the veins in his neck popping. “Come on. Let’s go. We’re gonna go.” 

Ecklie is smart enough to step away, clear the door. He looks a little shaken but puts on a smug face as they leave. 

“Nice,” she says to him. “Real nice.”

She grabs her purse from the floor, steers him to his office. “Get your stuff he says.”

“I hate that guy,” Gil says, still breathing heavily, his fingers curled into fists. “That smug son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, he’s a dirtbag, but you gain nothing from going off on him,” she says. “Come on, let’s get out of here. You can take me to dinner.” 

“I really am going to complain to HR about him,” Gil says, grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. 

“Tomorrow,” she says. 

By the time they get to his car, he seems more himself. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

“Hey, you didn’t yell at me,” she says. 

“You really want to go out to dinner?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says. 

“I can drive,” he offers. “I can either bring you back here or just back to work in the morning, unless you have class or your other… other job.”

She had been considering going into the Palace, but she really doesn’t feel like taking her clothes off for strangers today.

“Nope,” she says. “I’m all yours.” 

She lets him choose and he takes her to a little burger shack, a couple miles away from where they live. She’s driven by it before but never stopped. There are picnic tables outside of it and they eat at one, bathed in the golden hour light of the setting sun. 

“Hey,” she says. “Thanks for saving my life back there.”

He smiles at her, a little bit of mayonnaise at the corner of his mouth. “You’re welcome. If anything had happened to you, I wouldn’t… I couldn’t have lived with myself.”

She reaches across the table and dabs at his face with her napkin. “Right back at ya.”

oooo

She makes such good money on Halloween that it’s worth skipping class to go shake her bare ass at men wearing nothing but a headband with cat ears on it. She wears black, liquid eyeliner in sharp wings that make her eyes look more cat like and pink blush heavy on her nose. Stacy wears angel wings, Janice devil horns and they partner a private room all night and make a killing.

Around 1:30, one of the bouncers comes to tell her that they’d had to turn away Eddie from the door. 

“Thanks,” she says. She’s about to take her break anyway. Alice is in the locker room and checks up on her. 

“How are you, Cat?” she asks. “Need anything? Don’t forget to eat something, okay?”

“I’m fine,” she promises.

“Lagi is going to make sure you get to your car when we close, okay?” Alice says. “Just in case.”

Lagi is their biggest, scariest bouncer. In looks only, he’s very sweet and always great to the girls and respectful.

She reads for school on her break, thumbing through one of her borrowed textbooks. This one has notations in the margins in Gil’s nearly illegible scrawl. It’s comforting, especially on a wild night like tonight. For a long time she felt like the Palace was her real life and the lab or school was just something she was pretending to be but it’s finally starting to feel like the other way around. 

Alice comes back twenty minutes later and finds her. “High rollers from the El Cortez,” she says. “Someone won a jackpot and they’re asking for you.”

She closes her book. “Okay.”

“Take their money, baby,” Alice says. “Take it all.”

It’s after four by the time Lagi walks her to her car. She’s carrying over $1400 in cash. She gives Lagi fifty bucks and a kiss on the cheek for his trouble. 

She’ll go to the bank first thing in the morning and deposit the bulk of it. It’s stupid to have this much cash lying around. She has a little safe she sticks it in, not totally secure but hard for a random burglar to crack. She’ll go home, put her money away, take a shower, soak her feet in epsom salts, and go the fuck to bed. She will sleep for roughly three hours, if she’s lucky and then she will get up and go to work. Halloween on a Tuesday should be a crime. 

Something feels off right away when she gets home. She freezes, tries to figure it out and it takes her a minute to realize that the light over the oven is on. She never turns that on. She sets her bag on the floor softly and creeps into the living room, looks around. Everything seems okay. Maybe she’d just… turned that light on accidentally? Nuking her cup of coffee before work? Her finger slipped and she hadn’t realized it because the overhead light was on. 

Shaking her head at herself, she retrieves her purse and heads into the bedroom to stash her money away.

On the nightstand is a crystal vase of red roses and all the roses are dead. 

Her heart is hammering now. It has to be Eddie. Flowers are personal and these leave a very clear message. Still holding her purse, she goes back to the kitchen where her phone is mounted on the wall. Picks it up and dials, whispering to herself, “Be awake, please be awake.”

But it rings and rings. She hangs up and hits redial. And then gets lucky.

“Hello?” 

“I know it’s really early,” she says. “But I think someone broke into my apartment.” 

There’s a long pause and then she can hear the rustle of his bedding. “Stay there, I’m coming to get you. Don’t touch anything.” 

In the ten minutes it takes for him to arrive, she learns that the lock on her slider has been busted open, and that the pair of expensive Stuart Weitzman high heels that Eddie had bought her are gone. Probably other things, too. She thinks if she’d kept the engagement ring, that’d surely be missing now but she’d offered it back when she’d broken up with him and he’d taken it. She has absolutely no doubt in her mind that some other girl will have it on her finger before too long. 

Gil arrives in gray sweatpants, a black t-shirt and his jacket, holding his kit.

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

“Don’t be,” he says, setting the kit down just inside the door and pulling out his camera. “Tell me everything that doesn’t seem right.” 

So she leads him through the oven light, the door, the shoes.

Gil dusts for prints and pulls a good one off the oven light button.

“He broke in through your upstairs balcony?” Gil asks, looking over the edge to the patio below. There’s prints on the glass door, too. 

When they’re done cataloging and printing, he tells her to pack a bag.

“You’re staying with me,” he says. 

“I can’t just-”

“We’ll go talk to the sheriff in the morning and see what he says, but you’re not staying here tonight or tomorrow night and not again until, at the very least, that door is repaired,” he says. “So bring everything you need for school and work.” 

She packs enough for several days. Clothes and her toiletries and her school things. He carries her suitcase and kit, she carries her backpack. They drive both cars over. 

She’s down to getting maybe an hour of sleep now if she’s lucky, so she forgoes it.

“You want a shower?” he asks when they arrive. 

“Yeah,” she says. “Thanks.” 

He has only a bar of white soap in his shower and a bottle of two in one shampoo. She moves her things in but she can’t do so inconspicuously. It's a lot of stuff - her shampoo and conditioner, her razor, shaving cream, face wash, body wash. It adds up quickly in the sparse space. The hot water feels like a dream but it doesn’t help that wired feeling she has, both exhausted and full of adrenaline. Shaky and on edge. 

She’d forgotten about the liquid liner. When she rubs her hand against the mirror to clear the condensation on the glass, she can see her face wash has done a poor job of removing it and her eyes are still smudged with black. She digs around her toiletries bag for the little jar of cold cream and tries to get the rest off. 

The guest room has a couch that folds out into a bed, a little desk, another bookcase, though this one seems more stacked with paperwork and forensics journals. Some bedtime reading, if she can’t sleep. She puts on black pants, a button down blouse. Standard work wear. She skips any makeup, leaves her hair wet. 

When she emerges, he hands her a cup of coffee. 

“Do you ever sleep?” he asks, worried. 

“I thought I’d get some, but…”

“We’ll talk to the sheriff and then you come back here,” he says. “Take a sick day.”

“Everyone knows where I work by now,” she says, holding the warm mug to her chest. “They’ll just think I’m taking the day off because of Halloween.” 

“So?” he asks. 

“So if I can’t handle both jobs, I probably shouldn’t have them,” she says.

“I also don’t want you making mistakes with evidence because you’re tired or scared,” he says. 

She can’t really reply to that, so she doesn’t. She drinks her coffee while he showers, eats one of his bananas, stretches out on the couch with her eyes closed until she hears him come out of his bedroom. 

He holds open the front door for her.

“We should take two cars,” she says. 

They drive to the lab, clock in, but then he makes her get into his car so they can drive a few blocks to the sheriff's department.

“Did you know Eddie had this in him?” Gil asks. 

“Not at first,” she says. “You know, I wasn’t really his type, even. He’s a music guy, he always liked to date singers. Be manager and boyfriend. I can’t sing and I didn’t care about that industry.”

“I have no questions about how he fell for you,” Gil says. “Only why you fell for him.”

“He’s very charming,” she says. “We had fun together but I don’t think it could have ever lasted long term.”

“But you were engaged,” he says.

“We were engaged maybe three months before I thought about leaving,” she says. “But then I got pregnant, what was I supposed to do?”

“Oh, I see,” Gil says. “And then when you lost the baby…”

“Right,” she says. “We would have got married, had the baby, but I can’t see that we would have stayed together. He’s not that kind of guy. He gets distracted, bored. I could just see him cheating on me or disappearing.”

“But now he’s stalking you.” Gil looks over at her briefly. “Not good either.”

“I’m surprised,” she says. “All you have is evidence. You’re assuming it’s Eddie, but you don’t know.”

“I trust you, though,” he says. “If the evidence says something else, I’d be surprised.”

They file a report, Gil shows the evidence he’s collected. They agree that Gil will process and report his findings, that Catherine shouldn’t return to the apartment until they know who was in it. If it’s Eddie, they can extend the restraining order. Right now it’s just her he has to stay away from but they can make it explicit that he cannot come near her home or her work, even when she isn’t there.

“He still frequents the French Palace?” Gil asks, surprised. 

“He knows my schedule exactly,” Catherine says. “Knows when he can and can’t be there. He showed up last night because I don’t usually work Tuesdays. They turned him away. I’m sure he was pissed about having to spend Halloween at some other club.”

With the blessing of law enforcement, they go back to the lab. Gil gives all his stuff to Gary, explains to him about the B&E at Catherine’s apartment and tells Gary hat Catherine is going home for the day. Peter looks at her venomously from his bench. Gil waits, arms crossed, for Gary to say something snide but he doesn’t. 

“Okay. Sure. Feel better, Catherine,” is all he says. 

Gil walks her to her car. 

“Stay safe, sweetie,” he says. Takes his keys out and unwinds his door key from the ring, presses it into her hand.

She drives back to his apartment confused, exhausted, and more than a little rattled.


	3. baby, do you know what that's worth?

_In this world we're just beginning_  
_To understand the miracle of living_  
_Baby, I was afraid before_  
_But I'm not afraid anymore_

**Heaven Is A Place On Earth - Belinda Carlisle**

*

Gil comes home with bags of groceries and makes her dinner. She’d slept most of the day and is now watching his television like a zombie. She’ll sleep most of the night, too. 

He cooks two steaks on the stove in a pan and steams some vegetables, cuts up a loaf of french bread.

“My mother calls it peasant food,” he says, when he presents it all to her. 

“Fancy peasants,” she says, gesturing to the steak with her knife. 

“Steak is really a cheap alternative to many things. It has, I think, the biggest sliding scale. You can carefully feed the cows and then age the meat and make it quite pricey but a standard grocery store steak is very reasonable,” he says. And then, “Why are you smiling at me?”

She shakes her head. “Just feeling lucky.”

He cocks his head, furrows his brow like he does when he’s trying to parse some social interaction that he doesn’t understand.

“My mother lives in Long Beach, I never knew my father. I’m an only child, I had one good friend and she died. I have acquaintances only and work two dangerous jobs,” she says. “Right now, the best thing I have going for me is you.”

“I see,” he says. “We have a lot in common, you and I. Only children. Loners, on our own.”

“I didn’t use to be a loner,” she says. “I used to have a life.”

“What happened?” he asks. 

“I grew up,” she says. 

He smirks, sets his plate on the coffee table. “Well as grown ups, let’s have some wine.”

She nods. “Yes, please.”

oooo

Catherine never moves back into her apartment. Gil’s lease is up at the end of the month and though he’d filled out all the paperwork to renew it, he doesn’t turn it in. 

“We’ll rent something bigger,” he says. “A townhouse, maybe.” 

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she hedges.

“My name on the lease,” he says. “You can just be my tenant. And if you decide it doesn’t work for you, you can find some place new.”

Gil is not the usual type of man she falls for, but even still, she can recognize the same pattern in herself. Meet a guy, move too fast, move in, ugly break up. Maybe she and Gil aren’t moving fast in the bedroom, but they went from strangers to friends to roommates in record time. Now she’s been sleeping on his shitty fold out couch for a month, even though everything in her apartment has been repaired. She just feels unsafe.

Of course the prints were Eddie’s but all they can do is amend the restraining order. If he slips up again, maybe they’ll arrest him but until then, even he probably isn’t stupid enough to slip up again. 

She never has the urge to fight with Gil or break up the friendship either. It’s been strange, living with him, nurturing the little secret alone in the dark of his guest room. Her feelings for him, her desires. She hasn’t slept with anyone since she’d left Eddie. At first she’d been too numb, too shaken up about the pregnancy and miscarriage. Then she’d just been too busy, too tired with work and school and the club. Now it’s getting harder to ignore. 

“If we find the right place,” she says. “If you think it’s a good idea.”

The right place turns out to be an industrial style townhouse farther out from the strip than she’s ever lived, but close to their work. Concrete floors, tall ceilings with exposed ductwork, a big kitchen, three bedrooms, two bathrooms. He takes the two smaller rooms and gives her the master.

“I’ve seen your closet,” he jokes. He charges her unfairly, too little for the space. It goes unspoken, but he wants her to be able to ease away from the Palace. She wants that too, not because some man thinks she should but because she’s nearly twenty eight, she’s been dancing since she was nineteen, she feels old and worn out and wants to have a career not a job. She drops down to Saturday nights only. 

A lot of things happen at once - they move at the end of November. Gil rents a moving company with a truck big enough to fit both of their lives into it. Gil gets his promotion to CSI-3 and moves to night shift. And suddenly, it’s Christmas. 

Gil makes them go in to see the forensics supervisor, Detective Shoemaker, and report their living arrangement.

He stares at them for a beat and says, “I thought that was a rumor.”

“What’s a rumor?” Gil asks. 

“It is,” she says, cutting him off. “We’re just… I’m renting a room. I’m his tenant.”

Shoemaker clears his throat and says, “Listen, what you two do in your off time is not really any of my business, but you gotta fill out the form, you guys. Just to protect my butt and yours.”

“What form?” Gil asks. 

Shoemaker stands, moves to the file cabinet and flips through the folders for a minute before pulling out a carbon form. While, yellow, pink. Presents it to Gil who takes it and says, “Declaration of relationship?”

“A formality,” he says.

“We’re not-”

“Gil,” she says. “Between Ecklie and… now this… we can just declare roommate status, it doesn’t have to be romantic. More of a domestic partnership.”

“She gets it,” Shoemaker says. “Who needs a pen?”

When they’re done, Gil wanders off and Shoemaker holds her back.

“Flynn, I don’t need to tell you that he’s one of like ten guys in the country who can do what he does and you’re a lab rat. If this circles the drain, I want you to be aware of the consequences,” he says. 

“It’s platonic,” she says. “If it doesn’t work out, I just move out. Believe me, he had me sign a month to month sublease.” 

Shoemaker chuckles. “Okay, sweetheart.”

Anyway, Gil on the night shift is a weird adjustment. She still has classes, and lab work during the day so she’s really not home a lot. They see each other in passing mostly, and for strange pockets in the late afternoon or early evening. Sometimes he’s just coming in when she gets up in the morning. It’s one of those - she’s sitting in his recliner drinking coffee out of a UCLA mug when he comes in and says, “My mother is coming for Christmas. You good with that?”

He doesn’t really wait for an answer before disappearing into the bathroom to shower. 

She usually spends Christmas at the Palace. It’s not a big money night but is steady enough, though depressing. The last couple years, Eddie would spend it there too, watching her dance and the other girls, of course. 

She’d spoken to her mom on the phone last week, expecting an unenthusiastic invitation for Catherine to come spend the holiday in California but it hadn’t come. Her mother must have a new boyfriend. Catherine didn’t invite her mother to Vegas, either. 

“I hear Sammy Braun’s hotels are struggling,” Lily had said. “Guess he’s on his way out. You been to that new hotel yet? The Mirage?”

“Not yet,” she’d said and that had been that.

She doesn’t know a lot about Gil’s mom, other than when he mails out a letter, he always gets one back a few days later. She’s seen it in the mail. Elizabeth Grissom, of Santa Monica, California. Their mothers could be friends. Geographically, at least. 

She’s about to walk out the door for a long day of work and then straight to class when he finally emerges from the bathroom in pajamas and his towel around his neck, clean shaven and clearly tired.

“Do you want me to get out of the house for Christmas?” she asks. “I could get a hotel room.”

“What?” he says. “No, of course not. I was hoping you’d want to meet my mother.”

“Okay, sure,” she says. “It’s late to make a reservation somewhere but we could probably find somewhere doing a Christmas special.”

“No need,” he says. “We always cook at home. Have a good day, Catherine.”

“Thanks,” she says. 

She’d assumed since Thanksgiving had passed without much comment that Christmas would be the same but it’s not to be. She takes her last final and comes home to find a three foot Christmas tree in their living room. It’s little, but he’s spruced it up with a string of colored lights and is sitting in front of the television stringing thread with cranberries and popcorn. He points to a stack of red construction paper strips next to him and a stapler. 

“You can help,” he says in lieu of a greeting. 

She offers to give up her room for Gil’s mom but he says he’ll give up his room and he can sleep on the fold out in the office. 

“What if she doesn’t like me?” Catherine asks as they hang their homemade garlands on the little tree.

“Why wouldn’t she like you?”

“I’m not exactly the kind of girl you take home to mother,” she says with a scoff.

“You’re exactly the kind of woman that she’d hoped I’d bring home,” he says. “Smart, independent, hard-working and kind.” 

“Ah,” she says. “Just not who you wanted to bring home, I guess.” She fusses with the end of the garland, tucking it carefully around an inner branch so it stays securely and doesn’t droop. When she’s satisfied, she glances up to find him staring at her slack-jawed. “What?”

“I never said that,” he says.

“Yes you did,” she argues. “You said you weren’t hitting on me and that’s fine, I’m not going to fall apart because you aren’t attracted to me.” 

“I never said that, either,” he says. “And I wasn’t hitting on you! I didn’t even know you. You think I don’t find you attractive?”

She sits down on the corner of the wooden coffee table. “You never… indicated that you were.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not the best at this, but I don’t think that’s true. And anyway, you seemed like you weren’t interested in… it doesn’t matter, it’s not a good idea,” he says, rubbing the top of his head in frustration.

“Why?” she asks, tucking her hands between her knees and squeezing her fingers hard. 

“Because we live together,” he says. “Because I’m kind of your supervisor. Because I’ll never want to give you what you actually want.”

“How do you know what I actually want?” she demands.

“A marriage, children, I don’t want those things,” he says. 

“And you think I do?” she asks. 

“You were engaged, you were pregnant!”

“He fucked with my birth control!” she says, standing up in anger. She can feel her fingers tingle as the blood rushes back into them. “You know that! I told you that! I don’t want to have a baby, I worked so hard my whole life not to get pregnant and turn out like my mother!”

He blinks at her. “Oh.”

“I have always been, at best, ambivalent about children and I don’t think you need to be married to be happy,” she says. “But sometimes it would be nice to have someone on my side, you know? To sleep with at night? No one is asking you for a ring, here, Gil.”

“Oh,” he says again. “I still think a relationship is a bad idea.”

“We’re already in a relationship,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut to stave off the headache he’s giving her. “That’s why he made us fill out the form. Like it or not, sex or not, this is a relationship and everyone sees that but you.” She shakes her head, looks at her watch. “You’re going to be late for work.”

He looks at his own watch and says, “Shit.” 

He puts on his jacket, waves his hand at the coffee table and says, “Leave the mess, I’ll clean it up when I get home.”

Of course she doesn’t. She puts away the cranberries, throws away the rest of the stale popcorn in the bowl. Puts the stapler back onto his desk in the office. Shuts off all the lights in the living room so that the only thing still on is the little string of lights on the tree. 

She’s been so stupid about this whole thing. They both have. Anyway, being attracted isn’t the same thing as being in love.

oooo

Gil introduces his mother as Betty, speaking slowly, his hands moving rapidly. 

It answers her questions about why they write so many letters. 

“You must be Catherine,” his mother says, her voice easily understood, though with the familiar cadence of someone who’d been deaf for a long time. 

“She can read lips,” Gil says. 

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Grissom,” she says. Betty moves in for a hug which Catherine returns stiffly. Her own mother wasn’t a hugger. 

“I feel like I know you already, Gil has written about you so much,” Betty says. 

Gil at least has the good graces to look embarrassed about this. Things have been tense in scarce moments they spend together. Grissom’s promotion to nights has meant Ecklie coming onto days, so work has been weird. There’s a night shift lab spot about to open because Jackie is quitting to have a baby. She’s been thinking about putting in for it now that she’s graduated. 

Gil wants her to apply to the criminalist cadet program. A year long program that would put her in the field when she completed it. “But not necessarily here, in Clark County,” Catherine had pointed out. “And an experienced lab tech can make more than a CSI-1.”

“But not a CSI-2 or three,” he’d said. “Plenty of lab techs want to go into the field but not many are suited for it. You’re probably even better suited for the field than the lab.”

The cadet program would pay her, but not as much as her lab position. She’d have to quit the lab and go back to working more nights at the Palace, even with the cheap rent. 

“I can work my way up from the lab without doing the program, the old fashioned way,” she’d said. 

She understands his side of it. It will certainly take longer if she does that and someone will have to train her on the job. He hasn’t said as much, but she knows it can’t be Gil. Maybe that’s why he’s started nagging her about the cadet program. They’d signed the form, he can’t do her favors anymore. 

“I like the new house,” Betty says now, loudly. 

“I’ll show you around,” Gil says. 

Because it’s Christmas, Catherine takes weekend overtime in the lab and gives Gil the space of the weekend to spend with his mother. Christmas is on a Monday, and she’ll get Tuesday off too, for her trouble. She doesn’t mind weekend work, the building is scarce of people thought not of work to do, and no one cares if she works with a walkman in the pocket of her lab coat. 

Saturday, she’s pulled off blood spatter and works the photo lab instead. The lab has its own darkroom to develop crime scene photos. She’s not trained on the actual development, but she helps process by documenting work and collecting dried photos off the line, bundling them together by case and bringing them to whichever CSI is handling it.

Today, she runs a batch to Ecklie who is working overtime, too. 

“Baby on the way,” he says. “Need the extra dough.” 

“Congrats,” she says, picturing his face in the lights of a strip club not long enough ago. 

“Hey, you’re our reigning blood spatter queen, right?” Ecklie asks, pulling the photos out. 

“I know my splat,” she says, “Why?”

He slides her a picture of a headboard covered in arterial spray.

“What do you make of that?” Ecklie asks.

“Someone got their throat slit in bed,” she says. 

“That was the wife,” he says. “Husband was more brutal. I think they cut her throat so she wouldn’t scream and wake the neighbors. He was strangled, but it wasn’t a rope, not a belt. Doctor Robbins says whatever it was was wide and probably kind of soft.” 

“Made him watch the wife first,” Catherine says. “Sickos.” She pushes the picture back to him. “It was the curtain tie. Probably made of the same fabric.”

“What?” he says, looking at the picture. “How do you know?”

She points to the window to the side of the bed. “There’s a dent in the fabric. Looks like a silk satin.” 

He picks up his magnifying glass. “I’ll be damned. We gotta get you into the field, Flynn.”

“Gotta go,” she says. “You guys produce like a million roles of film a day, you know that?” 

It’s late when she comes home again. She’d extended her shift an additional four hours because the only thing better than overtime is double overtime. But that means that the house is mostly dark when she comes in. There’s a lamp on in the living room and it smells good, like whatever they’d had for dinner. Gil is in his recliner, reading.

“We saved you a plate,” he says. 

“Thank you,” she says. She sets her stuff down, opens the fridge. There’s a plate wrapped in plastic wrap with chicken and potatoes and a vegetable medley. She puts it in the microwave and turns it on for thirty seconds, just to take the chill off. When she turns around again, he’s right there, so close it startles her.

“How was work?” he asks. He sniffs. “You smell like phenidone.”

“I was in the photo lab,” she says. “Good nose. Guess I need a shower.” 

“Job hazard,” he says. “Could be worse.”

“Could _always_ be worse. I heard they were processing a car where a body had been in it for two weeks today,” she says. “Anyway. How was your day with mom?”

“Good,” he says. “We went to the Mirage.”

“Without me?” she says. “Aw, man, I’m never gonna see that place!” 

“It’s only been open a month,” he says. “I’ll take you, I promise.”

“How was it?” she asks. The microwave beeps behind her. 

“Flashy,” he says. “Apparently there are cameras everywhere. Every card table, every slot, every entrance. If you can sit in a chair, you’re on camera.”

“Wow,” she says.

“Even the elevators,” he says. “Think about what solving a case is going to be like in ten years, Catherine. All we’ll have to do is find the footage.” 

“You worry about job security?” she asks, uncovering her plate carefully and digging a fork out of the drawer. “Like all these machines are going to make us pointless?”

“No,” he says. “I think technology will only make us more accurate.”

“Hmm,” she says. “Glad you’re confident.” 

He finally steps aside so she can pass him to go sit at the dining table. 

“Come sit with me,” she says, so he does. “What else was there. Did you see the volcano erupt?”

“No, that was too crazy. Too many people, we don’t like that,” he says.

“What’s on the docket for tomorrow?” she asks. 

“Making pie, I think,” he says. 

“Sounds nice,” she says. 

“Are you working again tomorrow?” he asks. 

She nods. “Good money.” 

He stays with her until she finishes, while she cleans up the dish and puts it in the dishwasher. He even trails her when she takes her bag and heads upstairs. There’s no reason for him to come upstairs - the guest room and the office are downstairs, the only thing on the second floor is a small landing full of weird, unusable space that they’ve filled with boxes they haven’t unpacked yet and the master suite. Still, when she drops her bag and coat on the top of her white dresser, she turns back and he’s right there, so close. 

“Cath,” he says softly. 

“Now?” she asks. “You finally want to do this now, while your mother is here?”

“What’s she going to do, hear us?” he asks. 

She snorts back laughter at the inappropriate joke and his little smirk makes her stomach flip. She’s thought about kissing him a hundred times in a hundred different places but she’d been so sure for so long that it wasn’t going to happen. Men who want to try to kiss her usually do it within the first hour of meeting her. She’s known Gil nearly a year. 

“I bet you snuck all the girls in, I bet you got away with everything,” she murmurs as his hands cup her face.

“Nah,” he says softly.

“What if she can feel the bed moving?” Catherine asks. “My room is right above yours.”

Gil closes his eyes briefly, as if pained. He swallows. “I was only going to kiss you,” he says, lids still shut.

“Pity,” she replies. She’s been dreaming about his pouty bottom lip for nine months now so she closes the gap herself. He kisses her eagerly, pressing his whole body against hers, her whole body against the wall. He’s so warm, so alive. She feels totally enveloped by him. His hands cupping her head, his tongue in her mouth, his knee between her legs. 

She slips her hands up under his shirt, just so she can feel his skin, hot to the touch. 

He pulls his mouth away, rests his forehead on the wall next to her, panting. 

“Good night, Catherine,” he says finally, pulling away completely. 

She gives him a lazy smile.

“Good night, Gil,” she says. 

He turns to go but pauses, looks back over his shoulder. “Just so you know, I’ll never be able to go into the photo lab again without thinking about you and this.”

She chuckles. “Good.”

oooo

Christmas is nice. Gil gets her a forensics field kit. For practice, he tells her. So when she does start going into the field, she’ll already be familiar with techniques she doesn’t use in the lab, and if she enrolls as a cadet, she’ll be ready then, too. Another nudge by him. Maybe men just can’t help it, maybe all of them, even the good ones, think they know best. 

His mother gets Catherine a gift, too, which is embarrassing because she hadn’t got anything for Betty. She’d never even met the woman. Her gift is a small gold circle on a delicate chain. Nothing too expensive but flattering and pretty and petite.

“Thank you,” she says. “It’s so nice of you.”

“Gil helped me choose,” she says, her hands moving along with her voice. 

Betty stays one more night and then Gil takes her back to the airport on the day after Christmas, early enough in the morning that Catherine doesn’t offer to go along. When he gets back, she’s only barely showered and dressed.

“Do you want to go get a drink?” he says when he sees her, keys still in his hand.

She has to process the words for a few moments, her brain still feels like a jammed typewriter. 

“It’s like 8:30,” she says. 

“Casinos never close,” he says.

“Yeah, but…”

“I have to work later, might be our only shot for a while,” he says. “Let me take you out. Fancy breakfast. Irish coffee.” 

There’s really no reason to say no. “Okay,” she says. “Uh. Let me… let me change.” 

She hadn’t gone directly from teenaged waitress to stripper, she’d spent six months as an expensive escort. Totally above board, no sex, just companionship. Ultimately she wasn’t particularly well suited for the job because she had a brain and too many opinions of her own, but she had liked the paycheck. Had started dancing to keep the salary and have some control over her own schedule and clientele. But expensive escorts needed expensive things to go to fancy places with senators and athletes, so when she goes to change, she pulls from her closet her little black Versace dress and says, “Hello, lover.”

It’s hard to make a cocktail dress breakfast appropriate, but she pairs it with her white Reeboks and a denim jacket and it’s pretty good. She puts on her new necklace and a little makeup and is ready in twenty minutes. 

Gil is pounding a mug of coffee when she comes out and chokes when he sees her, gets it all over himself and has to put on a new shirt. 

He says, in the Jeep, that maybe it won’t be so crowded the day after a major holiday but she knows it will be, knows Vegas, knows how tourists treat this city. He offers to take her to the new hotel, the Mirage or even to the MGM Grand but she declines and tells him that she wants to go to the Rampart. 

“They have a good buffet,” she says. “I always get good service there.”

It doesn’t hurt that it’s owned by her mother’s ex-boyfriend, Sam Braun. Her mother both hates him and is still in love with him, but Sam has always been nice to Catherine when he doesn’t have to be anymore.

“You got it,” he says. 

Bottomless mimosas for her and Irish Coffee for him and a halfway decent buffet. They get a good table because she looks good but the meal is comped because the building is filled with cameras and Sam doesn’t miss a beat. He might not be here, but his eyes are all over this town.

“Compliments of Mr. Braun,” their server says when Gil asks about the check.

“You really do get good service,” Gil says, clearly surprised and suspicious. 

“That’s Vegas baby,” she says. And then, “Braun’s best friend Benny is a regular at the French Palace.” 

It’s not a lie, absolutely it’s the truth. Benny comes in all the time with high rolling whales, always asks for Catherine. But she tells him because she doesn’t want Gil to ask her about Sam or her mother or any of that part of her life. Wants the conversation to go in another direction.

“So much for taking you out,” Gil says. 

“I’d be just as happy if you took me home,” she says. “If you know what I mean.” 

“I do,” he says. “I want that. I’m just nervous about it.”

She shrugs, hoping to seem carefree. Bohemian. “It can be like the lease.”

His brow furrows. “The lease?” he says with a slight shake of his head. 

“We do it until it works. Month to month, no strings. And if it doesn’t work, we shake hands and part ways.”

His eyes look down and right, like when he’s puzzling something out. The crossword in the _Los Angeles Times_ \- the special subscription he gets because he doesn’t like the _Review-Journal_ , whatever case he’s processing, some social interaction that has him stymied. 

“A sexual relationship isn’t a lease,” he says. 

“No,” she agrees. “But it doesn’t have to be complicated.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Where are you gonna find another pretty girl who likes blood spatter as much as me?”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “Nowhere,” he says.

“Have you checked?” she asks with a laugh. 

He nods slowly. “I have,” he says.

The casino floor is filled with tourists as they walk back toward their car. If he were anyone else, she’d hold his hand for the stroll past chronic gamblers at the tables and slots, tourists trying to wrangle their children, cocktail waitresses and valets for whom this is just another day. But Gil isn’t just anyone.

The drive home is quiet. She can tell he’s still thinking things through.

She’s not sure he’s going to go through with it honestly. She thinks maybe his comfort zone of being brooding and alone and on the fringe of society, shrouded in science and death is too much for him to step out of. Yet, when it comes time, he follows her up the stairs and into her bedroom. 

Eddie had been an aggressive lover, she’d always find bruises after. Tears in her underwear, her other clothes tangled and thrown, she’d always be sore once the pleasure faded.

Gil is slow and gentle and meticulous. He undresses her like he’s cataloging her. Folds each piece of clothing and places it on the counter. Her denim jacket, her expensive dress, her black cotton briefs. She hadn't worn a bra, hadn't needed one. He has her naked and displayed on the bed before he even shrugs out of his own clothes. 

He’s still slim, though she can see the beginning of middle aged spread in his stomach. He has so much about him that makes him seem young and boyish and just as many things that make him seem old and wise. His boyishness melts away when his clothes go and she realizes he’s all man. 

She doesn’t think that his gentleness will be as thrilling or satisfying as a rough tumble in the sack, but it’s so different and sincere. He touches her everywhere, gets her off with such dark focus that she’s left shuddering for full minutes after. He doesn’t flip her over and keep going, he just holds her until she’s ready.

People expect strippers to also be experts in sex, but she’s really only had a handful of partners, Eddie by far being the longest relationship she’d ever been in. She’d been worried that he’d have expectations she couldn’t meet, but Gil seems perfectly happy to be in charge. He checks in, though. He asks her more than once if things are okay, if she likes it. He asks permission before he pushes into her. It’s sweet. She feels cared for in a way she never has before. 

After, he doesn’t stay the night. He stays for a while, holding her hand, watching the light change through her window. And then he says, “I have to go to work.” 

She’d forgotten, still in the bubble of the day, the post-holiday haze. “Okay.” 

He puts on just his underwear and holds the rest of his clothes. Leans down and kisses her cheek before slipping away. 

oooo

There’s a gang shootout and Ecklie brings Catherine along to do scut work in the field. There’s six dead bodies, bullet casings all over the block. She works with Jason Edwards, a CSI-2, following him with packages of bindles. He takes a photograph of every casing they find and drops it into her bindle. She fills out the label with the corresponding number tag that appears in the photo and writes that it’s a bullet casing. Signs each one _C. Flynn_ and drops it into the case on her shoulder. They find fifty three bullet casings. 

All the uniforms are men’s sizes so she has to wear a jacket that’s too big that labels her as part of the forensics team. 

After the casings are cataloged, they go looking for actual bullets and catalog those. Stuck in the wooden fence, one in a tree. It’s Catherine who walks by the storm drain and thinks that if she were trying to lose a gun fast, that’s where she’d dump it. So she drops to her knees and then flat down on the ground so she can shine a flashlight into the drain. Sweeps it across what looks like three guns.

“Hey Edwards!” she says. “You want some guns?”

She gets a good reputation for that, anyway. Ecklie stops looking past her. They aren’t friends, but he realizes that she’s not the bimbo he’d taken her for. 

Anyway, she hasn’t worked a shift at the Palace in nearly three weeks. 

In fact, on Friday, she decides to go in and clean her locker out. Some girls make a big show of quitting, especially when they start dating rich guys. The smart ones never really quit, they just leave. There isn’t a lot in the locker - a few skimpy outfits and a handful of cosmetics. She can fit it all into one canvas tote bag. There’s a mirror on the door of the locker and she looks at herself and sees that she doesn’t even look like she belongs here anymore. She has on slacks and a wrinkled blouse, her fair hair up in a ponytail, no makeup. 

“You can come back anytime, sweetheart,” Alice says, watching her. “Don’t even gotta audition. Just walk in, the place is yours.” 

“Thank you,” Catherine says, giving her a hug. “Tell Teddy I said thanks, too.”

“He knew you were gonna leave as soon as you started studying science,” Alice says.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Girls go to school all the time. Paralegals or real estate or cosmetology. Those girls always come back. But you’re too brainy, you know?”

“You never know,” Catherine says. “No one can predict life.”

“That new boyfriend of yours treating you right?” Alice asks, walking her to the door.

“He’s…” She starts to say he isn’t her boyfriend, because he isn’t, but thinks better of it. “Yeah.” 

“Good,” Alice says. “Don’t be a stranger.” 

Catherine puts in for the night shift lab tech job. She’d gone back and forth about it, but it’s more money and she’s not dancing anymore. Plus, it wouldn’t be the worst to be on the same schedule as Gil. He’s been true to his word - they have sex but they don’t sleep together, no strings. It’s not hard, though. It’s strangely easy. A good situation. He’s still sweet to her, still spends time with her. He’s just Gil. Sometimes he’s teaching her to dust for prints on their dining table and sometimes he’s in her bed.

Ecklie tries to talk her out of taking the night shift job.

“It’s better pay,” Catherine says. “I, uh, quit my other job.”

He searches her face for a minute and then says, “Well. Good.”

She almost tells him that he can go back to the French Palace, now, if he wants to but bites her tongue just in time to save her own career. 

Gil also looks like he’s going to try to dissuade her from taking the transfer to nights, but instead he says, “You have to pull an all nighter to make the transition. Otherwise it takes forever and it’s agony. Do it quick like a band-aid.” 

The first week is still kind of hellish, even though she’d tried to take Gil’s advice. It’s not even that she’s tired so much as things just feel wrong. Her body doesn’t want to knock out during the day, even after she buys heavy blackout drapes. She’d been used to working nights, obviously, but the complete turn over to nocturnal makes her feel a bit like a zombie.

And she worries that maybe she did make the wrong choice because Ecklie was letting her out of the lab now and then, but Gil won’t take her to scenes because he’s too worried about favoritism so even though she’s making more, it feels like she has taken a step back.

He talks about the cases with her, though. Sometimes they each lunch together, photographs spread across the table between them. She packs lunches for them, though they don’t carpool. Sometimes she makes suggestions and sometimes he even takes them. But it isn’t the same. 

In February, Brass stops by the lab and asks to speak to her. Her lab supervisor on nights is a much nicer man named Brian and he doesn’t helicopter around her, so it’s easy to step into the hall. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“We picked up Eddie Willows,” he says. 

She furrows her brow. Brass was vice. “Drugs? I’m not surprised,” she says.

“No, well.” He chuckles. “He did have blow on him, that helped the arrest go smoothly, but he was brandishing a firearm.”

“What does this have to do with me?” she asks. 

“He had your address,” Brass says. “You and the bugman’s. I volunteered to come let you know.”

“You’re telling me he was high, had a gun, and knew where I lived?” she asks. “Jesus!”

“We believe he even went there, but you weren’t there, obviously.”

“Good fucking thing I switched to nights,” she says. “What was he saying.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Brass says. “What matters is he’s in lockup.”

“Detective, come on, what was he saying?” Catherine says.

“Uh,” Brass says. “Something like, I’m gonna kill that cheating bitch.” 

Catherine nods. “He was always so stupid.”

“Anyway, thought you should know. They might call on you to testify later on, but we can worry about that later, okay kiddo?”

“Sure,” she says. “Thanks.”

“Maybe tell Grissom, now that you two are shacked up officially,” Brass says with a grin.

“Oh we’re not-”

“I know the party line,” he says. “You got some oceanfront property out here to sell me, too?”

She shrugs and he grins, walks away.

Gil isn’t in his office, there was a robbery at a local hardware store, but no body, just damage so she doesn’t think he’ll be out all shift. And he isn’t, he comes back storming into the lab and says, “My office please, Catherine, now.”

“Sure,” she says, though she says it to his retreating back. 

She closes his office door behind him and says, “What’s up?”

But he grabs her by the shoulders, looks her over, and then pulls her into a hug. 

“Eddie tried to kill you?” he says. 

His office walls are glass. She squirms out of the hug, glances behind her and sees at least three people watching. No doubt money will exchange hands tonight. 

“Sort of,” she says. “No. I didn’t see him, they just picked him up. He had a gun and our address. He could have just as easily killed you had you been home.”

“Oh, the cop told me… he made it seem like…”

“Just a bad game of telephone,” she says. “I was perfectly safe.”

He wipes his face, still looks distressed.

“Nice to know you care, Gil,” she says.

He gives her a look that tells her she’s being stupid and sends her away but it does reassure her a little that she’s not just part of his routine. And to prove it, she does something that she hasn’t before, when she gets home. She crawls into his bed with him. He always comes upstairs, usually twice a week, almost always one day midweek and one weekend day. Routine. 

But tonight, he doesn’t send her away, he lets her run the show. She makes love to him not quite as meticulously as he does her, but he doesn’t seem to mind her sloppy enthusiasm all the same.

oooo

In April he says, “I talked to the landlord. What do you think about buying this place?”

“What?” she asks, looking around like she’ll suddenly see the townhouse with new eyes. She does like it. She might not have chosen something so industrial, but it is easier to clean up their experiments off concrete. 

“It’s a good deal,” he says. “Makes sense to buy.”

“I mean, your lease, your money,” she says. “You’re _my_ landlord either way.”

“Catherine,” he says softly. “I’m not… I meant we’d buy it together.”

She’s been in love with him for awhile now and has been operating under the assumption that while he has affection for her, she’s more of a hobby to him. A pleasurable distraction, a live-in friend. But now she’s not so sure.

Eddie told her all the time that he loved her, couldn’t live without her, but he treated her like garbage. He lied and surely cheated and sabotaged her, manipulated her. Because he was passionate, she’d assumed that was love. 

Gil is never going to be good at expressing emotion.

What’s better? Being told that you’re loved and being treated like crap or never hearing it at all?

He may never tell her that he loves her. But he shows her all the time. The gunman in the locker room. His office, on display when he’d thought she was in danger. Buying the townhouse.

She nods. “Okay. Let’s do it.” 

He kisses the top of her head as he passes by, on the way to the phone. She watches him place the call to the landlord and when he notices her eyes on him, he gives her a wink.


End file.
